A recent report from Sharon of Roseville: "It has been 79 days since I hit the Enter button to make a purchase on Amazon that created a total technological meltdown of biblical proportions.

"I am not sure if I will have the energy to finish writing this email. All I can say is that my patient and thoughtful 15-year-old grandson, Jake, has not abandoned me in my misery and, in fact, worked side-by-side with me to bring what appears to be an end to this nightmare.

"On November 6th, I decided to buy an iMac, and I did. After receiving my new computer, I immediately replaced the miniature keyboard, which didn't even have a number keypad. The new keyboard had a very low profile, and it allowed me to type two letters at a time, which resulted in my getting the wrong letter every time.

The little treasures

Reports PAT: "My mom was going through some old pictures and found these from the 1937 (I think) Winter Carnival."

And the mouse -- the stylish little wireless mouse -- had a life of its own. It delighted in responding to the lightest touch, resulting in its zooming from A1 on a spreadsheet to C768. Over and over I tried to complete a spreadsheet which should have taken five minutes and wasted one hour, resulting in me slinking over to my big recliner to sit in the dark all alone and in tears.

"At first I was totally enchanted with iPhoto, which has face recognition. It was really good at recognizing my mother's face, but never knew who my father was. I played with the application for days. As I imported my photos, I noticed that I could not find all of them. I have over 19,000 photos. To make the situation more dire, I could not find some of my favorite pictures of my grandkids.

Advertisement

I still haven't found them.

"I decided to go back to business as usual and worked on some genealogy research for my customers. As is my wont, I looked for the PrtScn button to copy a page of the 1870 Census, only to discover that the button didn't exist on the keyboard. I needed to send a copy of the page to my customer! Jake told me to do a command/shift/3, and I did. A picture appeared on my desktop, but I couldn't copy and paste it into an email -- on top of which, I couldn't crop the image so it was readable.

Continues PAT: "My grandfather is on the far left in this picture."

BULLETIN BOARD NOTES: Our Web-wandering research has concluded that this is the 1939 Ice Palace. Our best find: http://tinyurl.com/Palace-39. If our conclusion is correct, that's Boreas Rex V Carl R. Gray, Jr. of the Omaha Railroad.

"Jake offered to install 'parallel,' which allowed me to have a version of Windows on my iMac. Then I could go back and forth between the two. Unfortunately, Windows was not stable under this situation.

"During this time, I discovered that I was not getting all my emails, and I don't know where they went. I tried Thunderbird, which didn't have folders, and the Mac email, and the Mac version of Outlook, and on and on and on -- I can't begin to describe the mess ... so I won't.

"Last week Jake installed 'Bootcamp,' which meant that the stable version of Windows would now reside on my Mac. It took forever to boot up, because I had to wait for the screen to select between the Mac and Windows -- and then, when I tried to pick Windows, I had to wait for the Bluetooth whatchamacallit to install, and sometimes I powered off the computer to start over again and still had to wait.

"Yesterday I asked Jake to come over and move my old PC to my desk and relocate the Mac to the kids' desk. Even this was not simple. The old PC had 30 viruses, which was why I switched to the Mac.

"We settled on arranging for Windows to boot up first on the Mac. Then we moved the old keyboard and mouse back. I can do a PrtScn now; I can paste it into an email; I can crop the image. I can do a spreadsheet without zooming to C768. I can upload a picture to Facebook. My emails are all where they are supposed to be. Finally, everything is right with the world. Except I have $1,750 less in my savings account.

"All's well that ends well."

Unclear on the concept? (resp'l)

Iowa Girl of Woodbury: "I think Nellie [BB, 1/27/2014] owes her friend an apology. The little overhead bin is a storage compartment, not specifically a garage-door-opener compartment. Personally, I think it would be very inconvenient to have to open the door and pull out your opener every time you enter your garage. If Nellie wishes to use it for that purpose, fine, but her friend is not wrong to keep her sunglasses there."

Birdwatcher in La Crescent: "I thought I recalled our car salesman telling us that the compartment above the rear-view mirror was for sunglasses, so I got our owner's manual and looked it up. It says that that compartment is the 'overhead console,' and the following is the description for that: 'The overhead console is useful for temporarily storing sunglasses and similar small items.' Nellie's friend was not at all crazy thinking that it was made for sunglasses.

"On another subject: You know the wind is quite strong when our heated birdbath has whitecaps on the water, which it almost did on Sunday."

Miss Barney: 'Huh? I have always kept my sunglasses in the compartment over the rear-view mirror. My husband says he keeps his Twinkies in there. Our garage-door opener is clipped on the sun visor for easy access. It never occurred to me to do otherwise."

Suz @ Como: "Nellie gave me a great chuckle. Humans are so good at finding alternative uses for so many things. Ten years ago, I had a semi-foster daughter whom I convinced the little upper compartment was a money dispenser. I always kept a few $20 bills in the compartment. She really believed it for a while. Now that she is all of 24, with a job and her own car, she complains her dispenser is faulty."

Keeping your ears open

Writes horsiegoboom of River Falls, Wis.: "Awhile back, I was watching the Weather Channel, and the weather person was concentrating on the Minnesota/Wisconsin area. When she got to Rice Lake, she misread the 'e' in 'Rice' for an 'o' -- and called it 'Rico Lake.' I wonder if anyone else was watching at the same time, and noticed that?'

BULLETIN BOARD NOTES: You are almost never the only one watching, and rarely the only one to notice!

Today's helpful hints

From Tiny Dancer in Shoreview: "Tiny Dancer has been recovering from rotator-cuff surgery and now has limited use of the right arm. I have made some observations during recovery:

"1. If the poinsettia plant is looking droopy, do not water it. If it's looking droopy the next day, do not water it. Or the next day: Do not water it. And if the plant (within the foil) looks like it's not draining, do not puncture the foil with a knife while it's standing on an oak table (with drawers) and you have an expensive wool rug and hardware floors (picture the Hoover Dam). And the most important thing: Do not do this when your right arm is in a sling.

"2.There really is a Santa -- but he wears brown instead of red.

"3. I raised two wonderful sons!

"4. Now that I'm able to shop more at the retail store from Minnesota, the cashiers don't pester me about getting a 'red card' anymore. See? There's always a silver lining."